She said he said

You can trust a grand dame for a good, bitchy comment. At last year's Q awards the torch was carried by Elton John, publicly lambasting Madonna's penchant for lip-synching during her live appearances. This year the honour fell to diminutive, 72-year-old Yoko Ono, who stepped demurely on to the stage and then proceeded to deliver an elegant kicking to Paul McCartney, the long-term rival to her dear, departed husband.

Holding forth ... Ono with that Liam from "Wassis" at last night's Q awards. Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty Nothing like a grand dame for a good, bitchy comment. At last year's Q awards the torch was carried by Elton John, publicly lambasting Madonna's penchant for lip-synching during her live appearances. At this year's jamboree the honour fell to diminutive, 72-year-old Yoko Ono, who stepped demurely on to the stage and then proceeded to deliver an elegant kicking to Paul McCartney, the long-term rival to her dear, departed husband.

Ono was at the awards to collect a posthumous honour on behalf of John Lennon. But after offering throwaway congratulations to a band called "Wassis" (Oasis, presumably) she got down to the business in hand, conjuring a misty-eyed recollection of her and Lennon's late-night chats into a coded critique of McCartney's music.

She recalled how Lennon would wake her up in a panic, fearful about his musical legacy and influence on the singers that followed him. "He said, 'They always cover Paul's songs, but not mine'," Ono recalled with a smile. "I said, 'Well you're a good songwriter; it's not moon-June-or-spoon songs that you write." Translation: McCartney is a peddler of simplistic pap, whereas Lennon was a genius. Other singers, she added for good measure, were probably too "nervous" to cover his work.

If nothing else, Ono's quiet little barb livened up an otherwise annoyingly well-behaved Q awards ceremony. But one can't help feeling that there's something a touch unedifying about the spectacle of an ageing widow still taking potshots at a former bandmate on her late husband's behalf.

Still, this is hardly one-way traffic. In recent years, McCartney seems to have been embarked on a curious mission to correct what he clearly sees as some festering injury - lobbying for his own name to be shunted ahead of Lennon's on the credits to some of the Beatles' most famous tracks.

All of this, on one level, is but testament to the enduring appeal and significance of the moptops. But on another it seems profoundly depressing, suggesting that its main players are as much prisoners of history as John Lennon himself. The Beatles broke up 35 years ago, and Lennon has been a quarter-century in the grave. He and McCartney's legacies are assured, and no amount of petty wrangling looks set to change that. Isn't now the time to let it be?